


'cause I'm still alive in two thousand forty-three

by lightningwaltz



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Anxiety, Gen, Missing Scene, i fear for night vale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-24
Updated: 2013-06-24
Packaged: 2017-12-16 00:24:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/855674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightningwaltz/pseuds/lightningwaltz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos adjusts to life in Night Vale.</p><p>Sort of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	'cause I'm still alive in two thousand forty-three

Downtown Night Vale was thought to be around six blocks. Specifically, Carlos was the person who thought this. None of the town’s long-term inhabitants seemed overly preoccupied with the area’s geography, demographics, or immunity to shifting tectonic plates. And, anyway, Carlos couldn’t know for _sure_ if the six blocks were a fact, because the one afternoon he’d tried to verify this he’d wound up very dizzy, somehow lost his way, and returned to consciousness in front of the library. There had been a post-it note stuck to his hand that said; “went through your backpack; thanks for the cereal bars!” 

(After rummaging through his things, Carlos had verified that, yes, his snacks had been stolen, and replaced with a wad of three-dollar bills. The money had been neatly tied together with a piece of string, and had never been a viable currency in the United States _ever_. They also appeared to showcase a man Carlos couldn’t identify at all. He certainly hadn’t been president.)

*  
When one wasn’t trying to define Night Vale’s parameters, however, it was quick enough to get to one side of town to the other. Which was how- on the way to meet up with this Cecil guy- Carlos ran into one of his fellow scientists. 

Raima was standing sentinel in front of the House That Shouldn’t Exist, arms folded, glowering like the thing had insulted her personally. In a way it kind of had. _It shouldn’t exist_ , after all. 

Mumbling his greetings, Carlos stood beside her. The house was a triplet to its neighbors, with its neat rows of bricks, curtained over windows, and even a picket fence. And it was probably a portal to hell. 

Somehow, that last observation made Carlos really take note of the day’s heat. The weather reports claimed the temperature was “void,” but his instruments indicated it was more like 115 degrees Fahrenheit, and would be for many weeks to come. He really needed to cut his hair to deal with it. 

“Has anyone knocked on the door, yet?” Carlos asked Raima. 

She narrowed her eyes, still scrutinizing the impossible landmark. “I was going to! I was all annoyed and I marched over here prepared to do it. But when I got here I felt scared again. So now I’m just kind of babysitting the house instead.” 

Carlos thought about offering his sympathies, well acquainted as he was with nervousness (and this was even before Night Vale.) “Why were you angry?” He asked, instead.

“My landlord put an invitation on my apartment door.” Raima glanced up at him at last, her eyes serious. “I guess there’s going to be potluck in our complex soon.” 

“That’s… not so bad.” 

“The invitation looked like it was written in blood.” 

Carlos sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Ohhhhh. Yeah. That would… That would do it.” 

“I talked about it with my neighbor, but she just said I should run tests on the DNA, see if it matches anyone who’s committed identity fraud because they’ve had a real problem with that lately. And then she wanted to know what I was going to make for the potluck.” 

Somehow, this made Carlos want to crack up. Almost. “What did you say?” 

Raima just shook her head. “I kind of stammered that seismology is my area of expertise, not DNA testing, and then I ran over here.” 

“People in this town tend to think we’re Scientists of Everything Ever.” He didn’t add that whenever someone asked Carlos something he couldn’t answer, he mentally berated himself for _not_ being a Scientist of Everything Ever. 

“Where are you headed, anyway?” Raima busied her hands, returning stray strands of hair back to their ponytail. Evidently the heat was getting to her, too.

“A meeting with Cecil. That radio host? He set it up.” 

The corner of Raima’s lips twitched into a half smile. “The guy who’s in love with you?” 

Once again, Carlos was struck by the urge to laugh, this time in a hysterical, confused sort of way. For him, deliberately meeting strangers was always as daunting as… climbing that mountain in the distance, say. (The mountain that seemed to be in a new location every single morning.) 

“He’s a radio show host, Raima. They all put on acts. It’s just a joke.” He thought about his hair again, and how some of his scientists had mentioned Cecil going into raptures over it on air. That probably meant it was actually looking ridiculous. He _definitely_ needed to get someone to cut it. 

“I don’t know. Have you actually listened?” 

“Yes,” Carlos lied. He had tried to download the show after the fact, but his laptop had flashed the word ‘classified!’ and then glowed a vivid shade of green for about an hour. The technology geeks on his staff who examined his computer later had claimed they couldn’t locate a virus.

Raima began to say one thing, glanced over Carlos’s shoulder, and clapped her hand over her mouth. She made a muffled squeak of indignation from behind her fingers, and seemed to muttering something that sounded a lot like ‘oh, fuck me.’ 

“What? I-” Carlos spun around and looked in the same direction. There was a rainbow on the horizon- which was odd enough, as there had been no storms this day- and its colors were odder still. Namely, its hues were _completely_ out of order. Red next to green. Yellow next to indigo. “Doesn’t it know there are laws to light?” he said, voice faint. “You can’t just do that.” 

He looked over his shoulder at Raima. Her face was pale, and all she could do was shrug. “And yet there it is.” 

Somehow this seemed Carlos’s cue to leave.

*

On his way to Big Rico’s, Carlos’s heart was pounding away, a steady frenzied beat. It did that whenever he was presented with something steadfastly unanswerable and/or innately insurmountable. 

But there was also part of him- a small, serene, perverse part- that welcomed such oddities. The world was full of volcanoes that could trigger apocalyptic weather conditions. The world was full of asteroids that could make humanity go the way of the dinosaurs. One’s neighbor could be a serial killer or a con artist. And sometimes, most times, it was better when the outside world matched the frantic landscape of Carlos’s mind. 

A man stood outside the pizza restaurant. He was nondescript from a distance, but up close his grin was rather appealing. The restaurant smelled more like waffles than pizza.

“Hello,” Cecil said.

“Hi,” Carlos replied. _You can do this,_ he said, going through his usual reminders upon meeting strangers. _You can do this, and you can be interesting too._ But Cecil’s welcoming demeanor lessened the need for this mantra, somewhat. Funny, that.

“Hello,” Cecil said again, and then winced. “I mean. Nice walk here?” 

“Yes,” Carlos. “Although… the sky right now-” 

“We don’t talk about that!” Cecil interjected. 

“Oh.” 

“That reminds me… Why I invited you here…” then Cecil handed Carlos a pamphlet that seemed to be written in ink, and not blood. “Night Vale seems to confuse outsiders so we print up this survival guide for them. I don’t think anyone’s given you this yet. Right?” 

“Nope.” Carlos glanced down at the glossy paper. _Do NOT speak to librarians._ “Thanks.” 

This was usually the part where he would agonize over whether to continue the conversation, or whether it would be _weird_ to do so. Cecil seemed to have things in hand however. “We can have lunch here, if you want? There’s the regular menu, and a secret menu, and an above top secret menu. But… wait. You don’t have anywhere to be, right? You’re probably very busy.”

“No, it’s fine. There’s something I’m thinking about doing after but it’s not scheduled or anything.”

“Oh? What are you doing?”

“I was thinking about getting my hair cut.”

Cecil’s face fell.

**Author's Note:**

> When I listened to Welcome to Night Vale, it was always funny to imagine Carlos's take on the situation.
> 
> The title is from Hezekiah Jones's Mississippi Sea which sounds like something out of the NIght Vale universe, honestly.


End file.
